Maur Levan

Maur: That's Maur, M-A-U-R, Levan, L-E-V-A-N.

Man: Okay, that sounds good, looks good. And, we are rolling.

Interviewer: Alright, thank you so much.

Man: You're welcome.

Interviewer: I am Evan Reedsom, and I am sitting with Maur Levan. Today's date is August 25, 2016, and it is approximately 3:34 in the afternoon, and Mr. Levan has agreed to sit down with an interview for us and talk about his life experiences. Just to give you an idea of the trajectory of the interview, it basically has three parts. The first part will be concerned with your upbringing, where you're from, your childhood. The second part will be your military service, and then the third part, maybe, will be your transition back to being a civilian and what you've done since the military. So, that's just a generic kind of structure. I hope that the conversation will just be kind of organic and we can take it wherever you wanna go, and we'll leave you to determine--

Maur: Okay, you can do it.

Interviewer: So, we could start by telling me where are you from and when were you born?

Maur: Okay, I was born February 26, 1923 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. My grandfather had gone to Atlantic City as a builder, as part of the Convention Hall, and all these carpenters, electricians, plumbers, there was no homes in Atlantic City for them to stay at, to be from, to build Convention Hall at that time. They had to come from Philadelphia on the train, on an excursion train every day, with $.75 round trip, on an excursion train, and all the mechanics were coming down there. Well, when he was down there, he saw what was happening when they were getting near the end of building it, and he said, "This looks like it's gonna develop "into a nice resort, maybe I come down here "and there's gonna be people who want homes built." So, he built a home, a three-story home with around eight bedrooms and two bathrooms, 2:00and a kitchen on the first floor, and I was born in that house! He spent a whole total of $2500 for supplies to build that house, and in addition, there was, he built another small brick house behind it, which just had four rooms, and so that's where I, that's my beginning. Then we moved up to Philadelphia when I became aged to go to school, and from there, I graduated from Olney High School and went to Penn State, and that's the beginning of my educational career.

Interviewer: What was school like for you? Were you in sports, activities or clubs?

Maur: I wasn't in sports, we were in clubs, okay? I was in a Bible club, and... I didn't participate in any other extracurricular 3:00activities, sports or anything like that. I went to Hebrew school everyday two days a week after I went to regular school, and belonged to the oldest synagogue in the United States, was called Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. It was built in 1740, I'm still a member there. I also belong to a synagogue, now that I live in this area, and Brith Shalom in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. You can see from the cap that I wear that I've been a past commander for three terms from the Jewish War Veteran's Post 239. I was also three-time president of B'nai B'rith, another 4:00Jewish organization, and that really was my activities and whatnot. Came here in 1968 to manage Berkleigh Country Club in Kutztown. I was a country club and yacht club manager for 45 years. I enjoyed that very much.

Interviewer: Wow, I'm anxious to get, I'm anxious to hear more about that. I just wanna back up a little bit first. So, you would go to school, like 'til 3 in the afternoon, and then you would go to more schooling after that?

Maur: Yeah, I got on the subway and I went down to where my Hebrew school, where the synagogue was. It was not in my neighborhood, and I went down there, and it was about, can't remember, two or two and a half hours, it didn't take very long. About two hours of schooling.

Interviewer: Long day.

Maur: Yeah, well it was what was expected, and even in the summertime, we went down and vacationed in Atlantic City, I went to a Hebrew 5:00school every morning for an hour or two, just to continue my education like that. I also went to Hebrew high school, but after that, I could go to grads college in Philadelphia, which is still a very big college for a Hebrew in cognate languages and other things, and that's about it.

Interviewer: Do you have any siblings?

Maur: I have one brother who died. He had all kinds of things wrong with him. He was two years younger than me, but as I say, he had a lot of physical problems, and died about, I guess about 10 years ago or more.

Interviewer: So, you went to school in Philadelphia.

Maur: Right, and then Penn State.

Interviewer: Then you went to Penn State, main campus?

Maur: I went to the main campus. We were 6900 students on the main campus. Of course, today there's 47,000 where we were, and I joined a fraternity, and I loved every minute of it. That was the best experience of my life, when I went to Penn State. I get the chills when I think of the Happy Valley experience, that's what we call it, Happy Valley, up there.

Interviewer: What did you go to school for?

Maur: I went for hotel and restaurant administration, so I studied that, and that took me into the food business, and I started out in restaurants in Philadelphia, and then somebody told me about a job opening as a country club manager and I thought well, sounds good to me. 7:00He set up an appointment for me and I went in, got an interview, and they liked what they saw, so they hired me.

Interviewer: This is later on. You're talking about after your military service.

Maur: Yeah, right, sure.

Interviewer: So, you went to Penn State for hotel management, and then you joined a fraternity your first year?

Maur: Yes, yeah, yeah, you weren't allowed to live in the house the first year, 'cause there wasn't enough room, so we lived in the town, in a private home. But then, in the second, third, and fourth, well... Second year, (laughing) because the war came along and that was it, so that was when I... Well, Pearl Harbor came along in December 7, 1941, and everybody had to sign up. You had, um... What did they call it 8:00then? Oh boy, anyhow.

Interviewer: Like the selective service?

Maur: Yeah, the selective service, yeah, everybody had to sign up, and we were told that as college students, we could continue on if we joined... Well, this paper says, "Enlistment in the Reserves. "A declaration of intent by freshmen and sophomore students "in colleges, maintaining compulsory ROTC." So, I had to sign this, and my father had to sign to allow me to joining in the Reserves.

Interviewer: So, this is your second year of college? You went one year?

Maur: Yeah, one year.

Interviewer: 1940, approximately?

Maur: Right.

Interviewer: And then, Pearl Harbor happened in '41.

Maur: In '41.

Interviewer: And then in '42, you signed up?

Maur: In '42, we signed up. Lived in a hotel for about six months, and then they decided well, all you guys who signed up, we need you. The war's getting bigger, so they called us up, and I went into the service.

Interviewer: This was the Army Reserves?

Maur: Into the Army.

Interviewer: When you joined the Reserves in 1942, were you expecting to be deployed eventually?

Maur: Oh sure, oh yeah, I mean, we weren't kiddin' ourselves. We knew we were gonna be called up sooner or later. We were hoping it would be a little bit later, that's all. Maybe be able to finish our college education, but it wasn't gonna be because they needed all the men they could get, all of, to go in the service. The war in Europe.

Interviewer: Can you maybe, it's so far removed from us now, could you try to explain, what was the mood like at the time? What was the country like in 1942? I mean, were you that excited about going, joining the military, were you nervous?

Maur: No, I wouldn't say that, I mean, wartime required everybody to participate, and how did they participate? By looking into their cupboards and pulling out aluminum, and all kinds of materials, and donating it because they needed all those materials to grind 'em up and make different things out of 'em, and then do gardening, little gardens at home so they didn't have to go out and buy vegetables and things like that, and everybody was involved. I mean, gasoline rationing came along, and you only got so much gasoline, you only got so much 11:00sugar. There was coupons for all of that stuff. I mean, everybody was involved up to their eyeballs in the war service, whatever, and my wife went in to the Signal Corps because she had a background in electronics. She had graduated from a school in Chicago, and she was sent down to Washington DC in the Signal Corps, as that was for, um, what the heck did they call that? Translating the codes, the stuff that they would... What do they call that? Oh my gosh, I can't remember, anyhow, then she was there almost a year, and then she went back to 12:00Chicago. What else to tell you, I don't know about things were happening during those years.

Interviewer: The whole nation that was organized around this was motivated--

Maur: Oh, absolutely, yeah, sure.

Interviewer: Okay.

Maur: Depending on what your job was would depend how much gasoline you got, and people, for pleasure, got only a couple of gallons of gasoline. They were very, very protective of the amount of gasoline you were gonna get.

Interviewer: Prior to this, were you the first person in your family to join the military?

Maur: Yes.

Interviewer: Other people joined?

Maur: Yeah, and my brother, he was two years younger than me, so he went in after me.

Interviewer: So, you joined the Reserves in early '42, March of 1942.

Maur: Right.

Interviewer: And then, six months later, you find out that they're activating you.

Maur: Right.

Interviewer: And then, where did they send you?

Maur: Well, we got on a train and went to, (blowing raspberries) I'll think of it, I can't remember. Where did we go? I just, I can't remember the, it was close by where you got all your clothing and stuff like that, you get started, whatever you're gonna get. We were issued clothing, a mess kit, and a cup, a steel cup, a steel water bottle, and a 1903 rifle. Believe it or not, a 1903, after awhile we 14:00traded that in for a 1917, 30 caliber. And then, we got a package of K rations, which was dry food, and hard to explain that, it had a chocolate bar in it. And then, C rations we would get. C rations were canned goods, and these little cans of food had a metal opener that was as big as your thumbnail. That's all, a can opener as big as your thumbnail, and you just put it on the edge and you just flipped it like this, and little by little by little, it opened up the can of food. Paid $21 a month.

Interviewer: That's what you were paid?

Maur: $21 a month, yeah. Yeah, $21 a month went a long way. It sounds like it's nothing today, but to give you an idea what that was all 15:00about, ice cream cone was five cents. Hamburger was 15 cents. My father bought a car the year before that for 700, a brand new Chevy for $795. I told you about the home my grandfather build for $2500. Subway fare was 15 cents. If you went into a restaurant, you got a full course dinner for 64 cents, I mean it was full course, I mean full four of five courses, enough, six courses. Steak, you get a beautiful big steak dinner for a dollar. Bread was 10 cents, pie was a nickel, Hershey bar was a nickel, McDonald's was 15 cents, a hot dog was 10 cents. A movie, you went into a movie, 11 cents to go to a movie. What else? A shirt was 75 cents. A shirt like I'm wearing now, cost 75 16:00cents. A shoeshine, they had shoeshine booths, it was 10 cents. You stepped up on a box and got a shoeshine for 10 cents. Train fare from Philadelphia to New York was $10 round trip. When I came out, of course we got the different things as a veteran, and they paid my college education. At Penn State, at that time, a semester was $800, and sheet music was 10 cents. I mean, you wanted to play music, you had to buy 17:00sheet music, you went into a store and you bought sheet music with complete was 10 cents. That's all I gotta say, it gives you some idea.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, you were making, you said $21 a month.

Maur: Right.

Interviewer: That's as a private in the Army?

Maur: That's as a private, yeah. Eventually, I became an ordinance, a staff sergeant. By the time I had gone through my whole career, when I got out of the Army.

Interviewer: So you go, they outfit you with the different uniforms and different food, you go to basic training?

Maur: Right, you would go to basic training, and basic training was usually seven weeks, and in that seven weeks, you got daily exercises, 18:00went out on a rifle range, you had to learn how to clean and carry your weapon, take it apart, put it together blindfolded, took seven-mile and 14-mile hikes. There was a com every week, you were out there hiking, you had to take a course in map reading, and then we went on Bidwack. We got in trucks and went to a big area in the woods, and set up tents. Everybody had their own pack with their own tent and whatnot, and stayed overnight however many, two, three, five days a week, something like that. That's where I was for my basic training. Now, somebody said to me... Well, I was sent to a place called Fort Eustis, Virginia. That was my first, first place to go, and that's, it 19:00was for 40 millimeter and 90 millimeter anti-aircraft guns, the ones that were aimed at shooting down airplanes, and they had a device that was attached to them that would tell 'em where they would point the gun, and somebody said to me, "You could stay here and get sent overseas with this unit "and get your ass shot off, or you could go to a school "and learn some more about it." I said, "Well, that's for me." I signed up for school, and they sent me to Chicago to the Coin Electric School, and I was there going to learn how to take all of that equipment apart and maintain it, the 40 millimeter guns.

Interviewer: That was in military school, that was your job in the military then, 'cause you went through basic training, and then you went 20:00to this extra school, in Chicago?

Maur: In Chicago, right, Coin Electric School.

Interviewer: And that was for the ordinance?

Maur: That's right, for the ordinance.

Interviewer: For these anti-aircraft--

Maur: Exactly, yeah.

Interviewer: Okay, how long was that school, do you remember?

Maur: That's about six or, how many months? I think it was about three months. It didn't take that long to learn a lot, and while I was there, my roommate said, "I'm going to a party tonight, "would you like to come along?" And I said, "Oh, heck yes." We got on a bus to an up north side of Chicago, went to an apartment house, walked in, and there was a bunch of girls there, and lo and behold, there was a girl there who liked me very much, and she says, "I'm gonna marry that guy." (laughing) Like that, when you speak the heart out's what she'll say, and so five years later, five years later, after I went through my entire experience through the war, came back, returned to Penn 21:00State to finish my education, then we got married. All that time was correspondence. That's how we got to know each other. After I met her, we were only together for a couple weeks, until I was shipped out, so to me, didn't have very many dates, but it was enough to know. There were people who got married a lot faster than that. Might tell you one thing. For every guy that's in the infantry, see I was in ordinance, for every guy that's in infantry, you need 10 other people, 10 other men in different jobs. You need cooks, you need people in the Signal Corps, for everything the Signal Corps does, phones, radios, things like that. You need drivers for trucks, you need road builders, 22:00engineers, bridge builders. The anti-aircraft guys that I told you about. You need guys who were in freshwater units. They took seawater, or river water, and ran it through machines to make fresh water to drink. You needed a medical corps, all those guys, the guys who came alone. You need supply people of all kinds, to surprise that. And you need chaplains. That gives you some idea of what's behind one infantry man. One other thing I might tell you guys, when we were overseas, we had to take salt tablets and Adderin. Adderin was to prevent 23:00you from getting, what is it?

Interviewer: Malaria, maybe?

Maur: Yeah, malaria. I couldn't remember, malaria.

Interviewer: And I wanna talk about that in a moment.

Maur: Yeah, go ahead.

Interviewer: We know you were overseas, but just to keep the timeline clear, this was 1943, you think, that you were in Chicago?

Maur: That's right, yes yes, you're right.

Interviewer: And then, you were there three months, approximately for schooling, you met your future wife there, but then you said it was a really brief meeting, at least, because you said three weeks, maybe, after that you were shipped out?

Maur: Right, we were shipped out. Let me see. From there, we went... Oh, here I got it. From there, I went to Fort Bliss, Texas, which was 24:00in El Paso, and that was where we went to where the ordinance base of automotive maintenance. It was Red River Ordinance Depot in Texarkana, Texas. And then, I did that short thing in the Air Force, and they sent us back down again into an ordinance outfit, and then when this ordinance after the basic, the inline engine, we were all ready to ship out. We went up to Seattle with, I think we had three railroad carloads of equipment to be able to rebuild all these engines, and each one of us was trained to do something else. I was trained in electronics, how to repair and rebuild starter motors and the other motors, anything electric in a vehicle, and that's what we did day 25:00in and day out, all we did was rebuild all the parts. When we got to Hawaii, we had, all these beat up vehicles that had been sent back from where they were that needed repair and rebuilding, and that's what we practiced on, how to do that.

Interviewer: Just to clarify, I spoke with you earlier prior to when we first met, and you explained that, when you were in the Reserves, you had a stint when you were gonna join the Air Force.

Maur: Yeah.

Interviewer: That's why you went to basic training--

Maur: Yeah, all over again.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Maur: I went through four basic trainings in my time. (interviewer laughing) They called it basic training, but you had to do that.

Interviewer: Before you could join the Air Force, they drafted you, they basically took you off reserves and activated you, right?

Maur: Yeah, right, I mean, when you're in these basic trainings, one of the horrifying things was you had to go through an area where you'd lay down on your stomach and they'd have a machine gun pointed over your head, and you had to crawl through all that stuff and go over all kinds of fences and things like that. It was really, they made it really rough on ya. Basic training was rough.

Interviewer: But your schooling in Chicago wasn't then, that was just all electronic--

Maur: No that was all electronics. Yeah.

Interviewer: So, basic training was seven weeks, the classroom was about three months, then you went to your actual unit, which was in El Paso, Texas, and then from there you went to Seattle, and that was practicing war with your--

Maur: Oh yeah, it was all.

Interviewer: And then from Seattle to Hawaii.

Maur: Right.

Interviewer: And this is by boat, or were you flying out?

Maur: Yeah, went by boat, and we went from Hawaii, we were four months in Hawaii, and one of the things that we did when we were in Hawaii was to learn how to live off the land, which was for training, what do they call that? Anyhow, they took us out on a boat, and you went over the side of the boat and down a rope ladder into the water, which was about six or seven feet deep, with all your gun and your backpack, you gotta get onto the land, and your whole group had to form a unit there and learn how to live off, just off of the land. They 28:00gave you only one C ration, and for the other two days that you were there, if you wanted to eat, you had to find something on the ground to eat, what was edible and what wasn't edible. Believe it or not, there was a lot of stuff that was edible.

Interviewer: They would instruct you prior to this?

Maur: Oh yeah, you had classes, oh, before you went to do that you had plenty of classes, lots of classes.

Interviewer: How long were you in Hawaii?

Maur: Just, we were there only three or four months, four months I think it was, yeah, and Schofield Barracks, which you may have seen in the movies, if you ever saw any war movies, that's Schofield Barracks, that's where I lived.

Interviewer: That seems like that's quite an adjustment from Seattle, temperature wise, acclimating to that weather.

Maur: Sure, it was nice, and as I said, you go until... Oahu, and you then, or Waikiki Beach. I have a picture here from Waikiki Beach 29:00where we were. Oh, and by the way, I have some pictures here of the 40 millimeter and 90 millimeter guns that were there.

Interviewer: Well yeah, we would definitely hit more pictures of the before those. Where'd you go from Hawaii then? When you left there, where did you go?

Maur: We were on the ship, and then we hit several islands, Enewetak and Ulithi, and they were some places where they were practicing the bomb, training for that, and they didn't release any of the bombs. They may have done small ones or something, but nothing like the final 30:00one that they did on there. And from Okinawa to, I mean from there on, and then we went to the final place was Okinawa, and I landed in Okinawa on the seventh day of the invasion, which was April the 7th, and we lived on the ground, brought all of our equipment in, set it up, and that was where, that was gonna be the training ground for the invasion of Japan. They were gonna sen 120,000 men, 120,000 men, you can imagine how many ships and the equipment that it was gonna take to invade that. Fortunately, they decided to drop the bomb, and so they 31:00did, and then once they did that, that was August the 6th of 1945 that the bomb on Hiroshima, and the generals didn't believe that it was serious, so they had to drop a second bomb. Oh, that was ridiculous. The thing you have to understand about Japanese soldiers, a Japanese soldier was trained for one thing. He was in the Army to die for the emperor. Die, that's all he's trained to do, he didn't care about his life, and that's the kind of guys that these marines, up against, and that's a tough follow. I mean, somebody doesn't care if they're gonna 32:00live or die, and they were hidden in caves. The Japanese had been preparing caves, and all the islands of the pacific for 20 or 30 years, and some of them were big enough for trucks, and ammunition dumps, and everything like that because they were getting ready for this a long time before. Even afterwards, their guys were after, when the war was over, there were Japs coming out of the caves, they didn't believe the war was over. As long as a year later, they were still coming out, where they had buried themselves in there. One of the worst jobs I ever had there when the war was over was going around and burning up all of the corpses. Oh, I tell ya, I don't know if you've ever smelled, probably not, you've never taken a match to a chicken feather or something like that, you know what that smelled like, well that's 33:00what it smelled like. We took kerosine and any kind of flammables and dumped it on all, because we couldn't bury all those, there's too many to bury, and there was no sense to it anyhow, why bury them? We buried our guys, yes we did. We gave our guys a decent burial, but we never buried them. You just had to burn 'em up. That was a terrible job.

Interviewer: Were these in pits?

Maur: Any place, wherever, even on the ground, we weren't gonna, some place and then cover them over, naturally, with shovels.

Interviewer: Yeah, I can't imagine.

Maur: Nobody can imagine, I mean, you know.

Interviewer: You did some island hopping. This is behind the main wave that's attacking, and you do a couple islands, do you know how long 34:00that process took? When you left for Hawaii, you said April 7th is when you made it--

Maur: Yeah, we were on the seas for about 61 days, by the time we left Hawaii, and went to Enewetak and Ulithi, and then finally to Okinawa.

Interviewer: What was that like? Could you hear the battle, were you close enough that you knew there was danger in terms of like, I've never been in a boat--

Maur: No matter where you were, sure, no matter where you were, I mean, if they were fighting you, you heard it. I mean, you wanna stay away from it, but, unless they sent you into it, but you wanna stay away from it. The only people that went into, near those areas were the ones who had to.

Interviewer: What kind of boat were you on? This anti-aircraft carrier?

Maur: Oh, I don't remember. Liberty ships they were, something like that, they called 'em liberty ships. They built 'em so fast, they built 35:00the ship in a couple of days. They were, huh, boy, I'm trying to think of the guy's name who built those ships, but he was incredible, how he decided to build the ship, and instead of building it one big one, he built it in sections and then put it together, which made it much faster to do. Like, you'd build homes today, what do you call homes?

Interviewer: The mobile homes?

Maur: Mobile homes! Like you build mobile homes, that's how he was building ships, yeah.

Interviewer: So, most of the time you stayed on the ship, but then Okinawa, you were actually able to go off--

Maur: Oh yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: The fighting was still going on there? Seventh day, you said?

Maur: When I landed on the seventh, oh yeah, the fighting went on from the seventh day of April until the middle of August, and you went 36:00out at night, you didn't go out unless you had a side arm with ya, 'cause these guys were hiding all over and it was dangerous, and our camp was right on the side of Kadina Airfield, where the big 29s camd in. Oh my god, when those ships came in, they were huge, big ships, and then the Kamikaze pilots, that was another thing, the Kamikaze pilot. He was strapped into a small airplane that had a bomb on it and he aimed that, he got in there, and he flew it out, wherever they were on, and he aimed it at anything that he could, a ship, or land, or wherever it's gonna be, and he killed himself, that's what they do.

Interviewer: It's that hard enemy, as you said earlier, to stop, that's a hard enemy--

Maur: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Interviewer: You job is to do, like, to keep aircraft ordinance operational, but then you also had this other job where you said you had to dispose of corpses.

Maur: Oh, that was when the war was over.

Interviewer: Was there other things that you were doing on the island? It was all just keeping the--

Maur: We were rebuilding engines. I mean, it was all kinds of vehicles that were getting hit all the time, I mean, we were getting bombed everyday. You had to be careful where you were going. The worst thing, one of the worst things that happened was, when it was time to go home, when everything was over, you went home according to points. You got so many points for so many days that you were in the service, so 38:00many points for when you were in active duty, so many points for this and that and the other with a few things that you had points for. The guys that had the most points went home first, and as you went down, you had to wait. I sat there for 11 months waiting to go home 'cause I didn't have enough points. There were these thousands of guys that were there, and you can only get so many home at a time on a ship, whatever, and this one guy who had the most points in our outfit, he was a regular. He was a regular sergeant who had been originally in the Army in Alaska. He was sent to Alaska, he and his wife went up there, and they gave them, I can't remember how many it was. Seven or 10 or 20, 30 acres of ground, that if he would take care and put that, make that 30 acres produce-able, after so much time, he owned it. They 39:00gave it to him for free, he could stay there, and he was one of the guys who had come from Alaska, and he was well trained in all kinds of motor vehicle maintenance, they were drivers and mechanics. So, he was one of the guys who had the most points, and he was sitting on his bed and he was waiting to go home, and a bomb came down and hit him, killed him. The first of us about to go home when the war was over, and he got killed. Some idiot, who didn't know any better, was still firing at us.

Interviewer: That's the randomness of war--

Maur: Oh god, yeah, yep.

Interviewer: You talked about, earlier you had mentioned, August 7th, you're on the island and then the bombs dropped, you said in August?

Maur: Yes.

Interviewer: What was the feeling of that? What was the mood?

Maur: That was August the 6th. Oh, were we happy. (laughing)

Interviewer: You were happy, is that what you said?

Maur: Were we happy, yeah yeah, you're right, we were happy that the war was over, that's for sure.

Interviewer: And, the same with the second bomb?

Maur: Well, we didn't know about that, I mean, we heard it on the radio, but we didn't. It's hard to know all the things that you hear on the radio.

Interviewer: What happened afterwards?

Maur: Well, afterwards, we had to get rid of all the equipment that they had there, and they couldn't bring it home, and we were pushing it off into the ocean. Unbelievable, think of all that equipment that we had there, it would cost to much, it was cheaper to build new stuff 41:00at home, so they just pushed it off into the ocean. Okinawa was coral, coral. They built the roads out of coral, they'd ground it up, put it down, and hd equipment to roll over it and smooth it out, and if you wet it, boy that was great. You get into a little vehicle and it goes spinning around, doing whirleys. (laughing) it was 115 degrees. We had one guy in our outfit who was a plumber from, in New Jersey, Vineland, New Jersey or something, and he built for us a laundry out of whatever we had there, so we had showers, he built the place where, 42:00nobody else had stuff like that. That was wonderful, and we had another guy who knew about making booze, so he took some dried fruit, put it in a barrel, and was making a drink, liquor out of it. We had this little monkey here that I have a picture of, and we had, the barrel was covered over with a cloth, and it would just cook, and he, when we were out at a movie, this is during the war was over. We were out at a movie one night and he pulled the cloth off and he started eating the floating fruit, and he was doing flips when we came in, yeah, going crazy. (interviewer laughing)

Interviewer: So, yeah, when was your 11 months like after the war ended?

Maur: Well, I'll tell you what, I had a special job. Another fella and myself had been buddies... Here, here's the, one of those Kamikaze's. Another fella and myself were buddies, and we ran a newspaper, and also we ran around to different organizations who were there at trading movies to watch at night. And, trading for, maybe for some food that they had that we didn't have. Whereas the CVs, they got, oh boy, they got the best food. The Navy and the CVs, they always got the best food, so we ran around, oh there was another thing there. 44:00Here's an official military ballot. This is what I voted on. Sent home, and here's the envelope, okay?

Interviewer: So, this is the Presidential election.

Maur: Why don't you read off who was in there. You see who was the Presidential electives? Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry Truman for Vice President. Thomas Dewey and John Bricker for Republican. Norman Thomas, which you may have or may not of heard of, maybe in your reading 45:00books you're gonna hear about him. And, Darlington Hoopes were socialists. You never heard of these parties, even. Edward Tykard and Olvin were an industrial government party, and Watson and Johnson were at a prohibition party. and then there were senators and treasurers, and well, I sent mine back. I didn't know who these other guys were. The only one I voted for was FDR. Then, April the 12th, FDR died when I was still in Hawaii. I was sitting on my cot and I remember it like it was today, and it came over the radio. I sat there and I cried when I heard he died. Nobody wanted him to die, he was a wonderful president.

Interviewer: Do you think most of your fellow soldiers voted for FDR?

Maur: Oh, I don't know. Everybody voted for who they wanted. So now, what did we do? They provided us with a program, a college program. You could take a college course, by mail, and you had to study it, whatever. It was no examination or anything like that. They had to take your word for whatever you wanna do, and you filled out all the forms and you answered all the questions and I sent it back in, and we got a lot of guys with some college credits that way.

Interviewer: This is what you were doing after the war.

Maur: After the war.

Interviewer: While you were still overseas.

Maur: Yeah, Okinawa, yeah, so we did everything we could to keep the guys busy and not go nuts. Of course, I was getting fatter by the day 47:00'cause you weren't getting the same kind of activity. They weren't, you weren't in basic training or anything anymore, so I gained too much weight, but anyhow.

Interviewer: And, where's you go from there then? This is all then, you still stayed in Okinawa?

Maur: Stayed in Okinawa, until they took us home, and they took us to the west coast, and we got by train, and we went all the way to New Jersey, and I can't even remember now, the outside of New Jersey, the camp that we went to.

Interviewer: Fort Dix, maybe?

Maur: Fort Dix, yeah, Fort Dix, yeah, that was it, and I got a pass, I went home overnight, one night, just one night and I came back, and a day later, I went and got my discharge, which was great.

Maur: How was that, what was that like coming home?

Maur: Oh my god, were we ever glad to get home, can't even... (laughing) After all that time, with the war over and everything, happy, everybody was delirious with joy.

Interviewer: Was your brother home by then?

Maur: Yeah, he was home too, yeah, yeah. My brother was in Europe. He had it worse than I did, oh my god. He was in the Battle of the Bulge. He was in the 101st Airborne, and that was the worst winter on record in Europe. That's how much snow and wet and rain, all the time. It was terrible, the Battle of the Bulge, Bastogne, where the general said to the German when he asked him to surrender, and he said, "Nuts." He wasn't gonna surrender, and then Patton came in. He got them loosened over there.

Maur: So you came back, it was just a day? And they just discharged you and let you go and that was it?

Maur: That's all, that was all there was to it, yeah. Like I say, they gave us so money, small amount of money. I don't even remember what it was now. I had some papers, but I don't know what I did with those. I don't know what I did with 'em, I got so much stuff. Oh, like I said, this was a picture of my outfit on Okinawa when we left the 295 guys. That wasn't taken on Okinawa. That was before we went overseas, but that was our unit, the battalion, whole battalion of 295 men, and as I said to you now, why God chose me, I don't know, but there's 50:00only three of us living today. Out of the 295. I'm 93.

Interviewer: So, you come back, and you're at Fort Dix, and it's one day, and then it's the demobilization's over?

Maur: Right.

Interviewer: And then, what do you do?

Maur: I went back to college.

Interviewer: To Penn State?

Maur: I went back to Penn State, 'cause I had to finish, and there wasn't any, I was anxious to get finished. I can go back to school so I 51:00could get my degree and go out and make a living.

Interviewer: You added three more years? Is that how long you went back to college?

Maur: Yeah, it was about two and a half years more that I had to go to finish up.

Interviewer: Did you get the GI Bill at this point?

Maur: I got on the GI Bill. That's right, and they provided the money for that. They also gave me money to buy a house. We bought our first house with a GI loan. Can't remember how much that was, but wow, my first home? How much was that? I don't know, it's so long ago. My first house was $10,000, and I built it in ELkins Park, Pennsylvania, it was a row home there.

Maur: When was this? So, you were at college, and then you went--

Maur: 1948, we were married.

Interviewer: Okay, you were married after college or still in college?

Maur: Yeah, no, when we... My parents and her parents said, "Hey, why do you wanna "get married while you're still in college? "Live in one of those motor homes or something like that, "or some place on," you know, and a lot of my friends did get married and did that, but I decided not to. Then, we moved back into the fraternity house, and that was really great, until I graduated.

Interviewer: What was your degree again?

Maur: I had a Bachelor of Science.

Interviewer: What was that for?

Maur: For the Hotel and Restaurant Administration.

Interviewer: Did you get a job in that field then, after you graduated?

Maur: Yeah, after I graduated, I got a job at a restaurant in Philadelphia. Then i went to Chicago when I was still in school for one summer of, what do they call it? When you practice in the field.

Interviewer: Internship.

Maur: Internship, yeah, in a hotel, in the biggest hotel in the world at that time, which was Stevens Hotel, and then Hilton bought that. It was 3,000 rooms. 3,000 rooms was the biggest hotel, and I was in the food department there, As a steward, and we could do 3,000 steak dinners in the main ballroom, and hot, and good! They didn't have any equipment that they have today. Two things I might note, that kind of 54:00stuff. One was, they would take the plates and put 'em in the oven, and then carry 'em over onto the tables where they were, where they were gonna portion it out, and they would take those plates and cover them over with blankets, and that would keep the heat in. The kind of blankets they use for moving companies, so that everybody had a hot plate. We had refrigerators that we had trucks, three-tiered trucks, and we would put cold salads on those three-tiered trucks, and roll 'em into the refrigerator. For the ones that, when we didn't have 55:00enough refrigeration for, we would take ice water, and take bedsheets, or tablecloths, cheap tablecloths, and soak 'em down, and throw 'em up over the trucks, and that acted as a refrigerator. Pretty smart guys made it, those days then, things that they did. At that hotel, we got the first rotary oven. The one with the, instead of the old kind where you just push stuff in and out, push it, on a rotary oven, boy you could put hundreds, hundreds of turkeys or roasts or whatever, and have it on, cooking.

Interviewer: You did an internship there.

Maur: Yeah, and then I went back to school, graduated, and then I decided that I would like to go because we were married in Chicago, I 56:00decided that it would be good if I could get a job there, so they hired me, and I went back for another six months, but then I had an opportunity to go back to Philadelphia, a job opening there, which was where my family was. So, I left there, my wife and I moved out of there, and went back to Philadelphia, and to a restaurant up in the northeast.

Interviewer: Is that where you worked your career at?

Maur: So, no, then I got a job at 2601 Parkway, which is across the street from the art museum, in Philadelphia, and that was a very good job there. That was a hotel that had many people lived in their year-round apartments, permanent, and the restaurant, huge restaurant 57:00downstairs with banquet rooms and a bar, a big bar, and so I worked in there, and I enjoyed that very much. Redid the whole kitchen, they tore up the kitchen. Wow, we were walking on boards and planks. That was an experience. Then, I had a chef that worked for me who was from Austria, and he was a fantastic baker. He made stuff that was not to be believed, really very good. The caterer from Green Valley Country Club, the guy who had, in charge of all the food there, would come over to our, because he was friendly with the owners, the Blum family of 58:002601, and they would allow him to buy pastry that we made in our kitchens there, and then one day he said to me, he said, "You know Maur," he says, "There's a country club that "just lost their manager, and they need a manager. "This is the only second. "There's only been one manager there since it opened up, "and you would be the second if you wanted it. "I'll get you an interview," so he said, "Wonderful." So, I went in and I sat and had an interview, and they liked me, so they hired me. So, that was my first country club. I had, like I said, 45 years of wonderful, wonderful time as manager of upscale country club. We had like 285 members, and all of them except one, when I went to 59:00New York, I managed a club there that had 1500 members, right, under the Throgs Neck Bridge, where was Oscar Hammerstein's original home. Imagine, big enough to be turned into a club? I mean, oh, huge, it was huge, and then we had three, we had three swimming pools that they built, that he did, Hammerstein did and we built them in there, and I think it was eight tennis courts. In the wintertime, they used to flood the tennis courts with a machine that froze the water, and then we'd have ice skating out there. We had Broadway shows as 60:00entertainment. I mean, I had all famous comedians. We would hire them to come in and do their thing. They'd get like $500 to $800 for just one night. I mean, in the '40s, I mean, that was a lot of money.

Interviewer: Is that what you envisioned? When you were at Penn State--

Maur: Oh, I had no idea. I had no idea, nobody had any idea what we (mumbling), and of course then I had my wife join me, and I would hire her as hostess or something.

Interviewer: So, you did this, you said, for 45 years? Your career was in these kind of country club upscale--

Maur: Right, right, and we had, in that particular club, we also had a yacht club. We had about, hmm, so long ago I can't remember, we 61:00had... Docks for about 30 boats, but then we had out in the water, when we would have enough for about another 40 or 50 boats of different sizes. The largest boat we had at any time was a 65 foot magnificent, oh boy that was, 65 foot, that's a big yacht.

Interviewer: So, I'm just curious, this whole time that this happened, you developing your career, you develop a family, and you're married, is the military just out of your life at that point? Is it something--

Maur: Oh yeah, I had no idea that I would never do anything about, later, only when I came to Allentown, that I joined the Jewish War 62:00Veterans. I didn't ever join American Legion, or any of those groups. I didn't have any interest in them, and so I came and joined the Jewish War Veterans, and that was a crazy episode. I was there for about two years, and these guys were, a couple of them were just crazy. They fought about different things, about, don't ask me what the heck they were fighting about, and this one Sunday we had a meeting, and a guy came in, and he had a gun with him. He was so mad at this other guy, he took a gun out. I said, "Goodbye," and I left, and I wasn't a member for about 10 years. I just didn't want to have anything to do with it, and slowly, that thing, that organization just, it dissolved, 63:00I mean it was, there was only very, very few members left, but the commander came back to me and he says, "Maur," he said, "Come on back in," he says, "We need you," and he says, "And we wanna rebuild this organization. "I think you could help me do that." So I said, "Okay, I'll come back," 'cause that guy was gone, the guy that made all that trouble, and I came back in, and I took a job helping him out. We started to have meetings, and very interesting meetings with different things happening, and so then, three years in a row, they made me commander. (laughing) And, I was able to go and take that organization where we would have only seven or eight people in a meeting, and 64:00nine people at the most, and I got some guys to come back in who had been members, and they were still paying their dues, but they weren't active. So, I was able to get some of 'em to come back in, and we had speakers come, about different things, and then it got interesting, so we were up to the point where we had as many as 20 or 22 people, including wives, to come to meetings. And now, over the years, over these last few years, now like as I told you before, with 800 guys a day dying, 800 veterans a day are dying.

Interviewer: From the World War II generation.

Maur: Yeah so we've had, in the last two years, three guys died. Now, it's going down again, and we can't bring in the new ones, the new 65:00guys from Vietnam and Korea and Afghanistan, they don't wanna hear these war stories from these old guys. They don't wanna bother coming back in, but fortunately, we were able to get two, if not three, of them to come in and join us, so we're slowly rebuilding that, hopefully.

Interviewer: And you're still active in that organization today?

Maur: So, I'm still active, yeah.

Interviewer: And that's in Allentown?

Maur: In Allentown. We meet every second Sunday of the month at the Jewish Community Center, and after about a half an hour, 40 minutes of the meeting, we have bagels and lox. Jews are always interested in eating, so I provide that, and set it up for them, go out and buy it and bring it in for them. Then, we have a few, well, maybe go out to Shea's to see a dinner show together, or something like that. Some kind of 66:00an activity. Go to Washington to see the Hall of War Memorials down there. There's an organization called The Honor, Honor something, that invites veterans to come to a place, like, oh we went to Philadelphia, The Parks Museum, and they loaded up one, two, three busloads of veterans, and took 'em down to Washington, DC, and we went to The War Memorials, we went to the cemetery, to--

Interviewer: Arlington.

Maur: Arlington Cemetery, and we went to the new war memorial, and then we came and got back on the buses, and came back to Parks. When we got back to Parks, there were 3,000 people there waiting for us, to greet us, and we went in and sat down and had dinner and a show. And they're continuing to do that, to bring veterans in and say, our way of saying thank you, which is wonderful.

Interviewer: Well, we're about out of time, I wanna ask you, and that might be the best place to end, but I wondered if you have anything else you'd like to add to the interview, of if there's anything a part of your--

Maur: Nothing that I can think of, really.

Interviewer: A thought that we didn't touch up on?

Maur: Nothing that I can think of, I mean, I've told you just about everything. I have these pictures for you, which will be interesting to 68:00see, and that's about it.

Interviewer: I wanna thank you so much for coming in and sharing your stories.

Maur: Sure.

Interviewer: I really appreciate it, and it's an important voice--

Maur: You know what happens to your memory, (laughing) when you get past 39, boy, it's hard to remember a lot of stuff.

Interviewer: Oh I bet, I mean, you have a full life, so--

Maur: A full lifetime, well.

Interviewer: Yeah, I know we only have an hour, so it's hard to--

Maur: Oh well, yeah.

Interviewer: I know we touched upon the surface, I guess is what I'm saying, so I've recognized that, but I think it's really valuable to hear you tell your story, so thank you.

Maur: Unfortunately, today they got a lot of homeless guys. 50% of the homeless guys are veterans. It's terrible, and our senators had better do something about taking care of them, and they have, and so many are having that, you know that, what do you call it?

Interviewer: PTSD?

Maur: Yeah, that's the other thing. It's terrible. It's hard to describe, and that's all, you know, years ago they had another name for it. I don't remember what I think it was, but it was nothing like what these guys, who Desert Storm, oh my god. From that heat, and all they went through over there, (whistling) terrible, it's no wonder that they're off their rockers.

Interviewer: Well, that's what I was amazed, when you were telling the demobilization that you were done in the day, and that you just seamlessly went back to your civilian life--

Maur: No, that was no problem. Yep.

Interviewer: Pretty amazing that your generation was able to do that.

Maur: Yeah, yeah, all us guys. No problem getting back into civilian life again.

Maur: Well, yeah, thank you so much.

Maur: I really appreciate you speaking with us.

Maur: Evan, thanks, sure.